Prayer Updates

It’s happening several times a week now, particularly in the towns and villages of Upper Egypt. A brief news report, citing an isolated killing here and there of a CopticMembers of an ethnic religious group from North Africa but primarily Egypt, where they are the largest Christian denomination in the country. Christian by “unknown gunmen.” Another statistic, usually just the name of the Copt, listing his age and his town or village.

But in mid-January, the murder of yet another Coptic Christian in Luxor province, 315 miles south of Cairo, has triggered widespread panic among the 4,000 Christians living in the area of Nag Hassan and its surrounding villages.

For 18 months, Nag Hassan’s Christian community has lived under the shadow of the deadly wave of anti-Christian violence following the ouster of Mohammed Morsi. On July 5, 2013, four Coptic men had been killed in Nag Hassan’s al-Dabayia village in a Muslim rampage that left 42 Christian homes and shops badly damaged, burned and looted.

So when Coptic Christian Shahid Nesemis Saroufim was killed in Nag Hassan on January 13, it did not take long to connect the dots, to perhaps understand why.

Please pray for Christians in Egypt, who are targeted by extremists for following Christ.